North Korea link reportedly eyed in $81M cybertheft from Bangladesh bank account at New York Fed
(FOX)- Federal prosecutors are reportedly investigating if North Korea played a role in last year’s theft of $81 million from a Bangladesh central bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The probe opens a new front in cyberwarfare where essentially a nation-state could be a suspect in a bank robbery.
No charges have been filed. Sources, who were not named in the report, told The Wall Street Journal that if charges are filed, the target would be Chinese middlemen who assisted North Korea in the heist.
North Koreans may not be charged, but North Korea would likely be implicated, these sources said. The Journal reported that some federal officials do not believe there is a North Korean connection, and the hackers could have just tweaked the code that was made public after the Sony hack.
Cyber-security experts learned that the hackers used some of the same tools in the February 2016 heist as the attackers who hacked Sony Pictures two years earlier, Bloomberg reported. The rogue nation was unhappy with the release of the movie “The interview,” and its depiction of its leader Kim Jong-un. No charges were ever filed in the Sony hack.
The hackers in the Bangladesh case reportedly used SWIFT, a global payment messaging system, and somehow persuaded the bank to transfer the money to four accounts in the Philippines.